Holiday Financial Tip: Eat Turkey Dinner

No, I'm not kidding, this is completely serious. It works like this.

Self-control and the ability to resist impulsive choices are key to financial and investing success. Whether it involves saving instead of spending or reacting too fast to market moves, such qualities are associated with success or conversely, where they lack, with failure.

Here's how the traditional turkey dinner comes in: foods that enhance levels of a body chemical called serotonin, such as the combination of turkey, containing tryptophan, with the carbohydrates of mashed potatoes, improve self-control and reduce impulsive choice. These effects were apparently confirmed amongst post-Thanksgiving US holiday shoppers in a paper on SSRN We Are What We Consume: The Influence of Food Consumption on Impulsive Choice by Arul Mishra and Himanshu Mishra, which I found in a new book by Meir Statman called What Investors Really Want (a book I will be reviewing soon).

So as US readers get ready for Thanksgiving this Thursday and everyone for Christmas, just remember to say, "Another helping please, I'm in training!"